Inheritors of the Roman Empire
The era of the '''Inheritors of the Roman Empire' lasted from about 476 AD until 565 AD. It began with the ousting of Romulus Augustulus, the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire. It then ended at the end of the reign of Justinian the Great, when his successors provoked the last and most destructive Roman-Persian War that would leave them both vulnerable to the rise of Islam. With the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the civilised world in Europe and the Mediterranean had shrunk. Western Europe fractured into a tapestry of so-called Barbarian Kingdom such as the Franks, characterised by economic and cultural regression, depopulation and ignorance. From this upheaval in the west, the Christian Church was often the sole institutional survivor of the Roman Empire. Yet Roman civilisation not only endured in the Byzantine Empire, but actually enjoyed something of a resurgence under Justinian the Great. However, it did not last, in what turned out to be a long cycles of struggle and recovery. History Western Collapse With the fall of the Western Empire, the map of Europe gradually settled into a new pattern. The so-called Barbarian Kingdoms in the west, and the remnant of the Roman Empire in the east, often now called the Byzantine Empire. Historians have traditionally labelled this era between 476 AD and about 1000 AD the Dark Ages, although the term has since fallen out of fashion. Nevertheless, we should not underestimate the scale of cultural collapse; Europeans are not some sort of depressed class needing historical rehabilitation. This was indeed an era of ignorance and superstition, and economic and cultural regression. Until the 13th century, Western Europe was a backwater of learning, with knowledge only flowing one way; from the more civilised Byzantine and later Muslim worlds to the backward Europe. Despite the influx of Germans, Roman influence remained strong in the Barbarian Kingdoms, and the Germans themselves were to varying degrees Romanised. Nonetheless, a barbarian past left its imprint, and society was long and irreversibly shaped by Germanic custom. These were warrior societies, settled rather than nomadic, skilled at ironworking, and divided into a hierarchy of ranks; chieftains to sub-chiefs to warlords to clans. Bonds of family and clan were very important, as were personal bravery and honour. Yet of formal culture or civilised intellect, they brought nothing with them to compare with antiquity. This hybrid culture was reflected in the law, which almost all the kingdoms moved towards codifying and writing down, often combining Germanic and Roman legal traditions. The characteristic Germanic device for securing public order was the blood feud. Men, women, cattle, and property of all sorts had in the most literal sense their price. Wrongs done were settled by compensation, or by the involvement of a whole clan if the customary price was not forthcoming. Obviously written law codes were purely for future consultation, rather than devices such as Hammurabi's stone stele, because literacy was so rare. Education was one of the quickest things to disappear, leading to a collapse in literacy, except in the Christian Church, the most important remnant of the Roman Empire west of Constantinople. Meanwhile, Roman coins were somewhat replaced by coinage minted with the faces of Germanic kings, but for a long time there was simply not much coin about, particularly of small denominations. Barter largely replaced money, and a money-based economy only emerged again very slowly. Centralised taxation in coin completely disappeared, which would dramatically shape the society that emerged in Medieval Europe. In a simple economy, the possession of land became the supreme determination of the social order. Because the great men of Germanic society were warriors, in time they became the great landed aristocracy; kings themselves relied on their own large estates for revenue. Slavery was not generally practiced in Germanic culture, except occasionally as punishment for crimes, and it gradually disappeared throughout Western Europe. It was also discouraged by many in the Christian Church. The Franks actually abolished the practice of trading Christian slaves around 658; Queen Balthild the wife of Clovis II had herself been enslaved as a young girl. Instead, the output of an appropriate number of peasants must underwrite the expenses of the warrior aristocracy; thus slavery slowly transmuted into serfdom. Thus many of the key elements were falling into place that would characterise the Feudal System of medieval Europe. In this structure there begins to appear recognisable states no longer a collection of barbarian warbands, speaking a Latin vernacular, and with an emerging class of landowning nobles. In material terms, barbarian Europe was a poorer place than the empire of the Romans. City-life dramatically deteriorated, skilled trades ceased almost entirely, and the population declined. Society became increasingly localised in outlook, as it became unsafe to travel or carry goods over any distance. Yet out of this confusion something quite new and immeasurably more creative than Rome would emerge in due course. Perhaps the first step along this journey was the emergence of Christian interpretations of the barbarian role in history, such as the History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours and the Ecclesiastical History of the English People by ''the Venerable Bede. Through reconciling traditions in which paganism was still strong, with Christianity and the idea of Rome itself, these peoples were on their way to civilization. Christian Church The Christian Church in the West was often the sole institutional survivor of the Roman Empire. Roman Emperors had often been alarmed by how structured the Church was with bishops, priest, and deacons organised in diocese throughout the empire, by its authority which in the minds of many Christians superseded the state, and by its wealth through donations from the faithful. Semi-pagan kings and the aristocracy looked to bishops with superstitious awe, and took them seriously as leaders of their communities. The Church was now a major landowner, putting them on a social par with the warrior elite. The senior clergy were unable to rapidly enrich themselves through conquest and adventuring like warrior nobles, but it had the extraordinary ability to retain what it already had no matter the turmoil and watch it inexorably grow; the Church owned about a quarter of all the land in England on the eve of the English Reformation in 1534. Moreover, her bishops were men with experience in administration, and lettered men among a new unlettered ruling class, which craved the assurance of sharing the classical heritage. Naturally, new tasks were thrust upon them. For a thousand years, the most senior advisors to kings throughout Europe would often be clergy. Two new institutions had emerged in the Church in recent years, that would be a lifeline in the dangerous rapids between a civilization which had collapsed and one just being born. The first was Christian monasteries, a phenomenon that first appeared in the East. In about 285 AD, St. Anthony retired to a hermit’s life in the Egyptian desert, and his example was followed by others who drew together in communities. From there, the idea spread throughout Christendom. In a crumbling society such as fifth-century Western Europe, the monastic ideal of undistracted service to God was attractive to many men and women of intellect and character. The institutions prospered as a source of missionaries for the conversion of pagan in England, Germany and beyond, as well as serving as a conduit for the preservation of Greco-Roman knowledge and literature. The Church’s other new great support was what would become the papacy in Rome. The archbishop of Rome remained one of the five pre-eminent bishoprics in the old Roman Empire, along with Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria. The prestige of St Peter’s See gave Rome a special place in Christendom, but something more was required for the papacy to begin its rise to the splendid pre-eminence which was taken for granted by the Western medieval world. Crucial in this was Rome's location, as the only great bishoprics in the West and the only one outside the Byzantine Empire. Bishops all over Christendom resisted claims of predominance of the five great bishoprics, but in a world turned upside-down by barbarians, the Western bishops became more willing to accept Rome’s primacy. The future medieval papacy is most clearly revealed in '''Pope Gregory the Great' (590-604), the first pope who fully accepted barbarian Europe. He was the first of the popes from a monastic background, thus bringing together the two great institutional innovations of the early Church. He did not speak Greek, and resented interference from the Byzantines as much as from barbarian kings. Gregory oversaw the first great papal missionary campaigns, including sending St. Augustine to pagan England in 596. Christianity would prove both a uniting and dividing force during the centuries after the decline of the Roman Empire. The early Church was plagued with theological schisms, especially concerning the mystery at the very heart of the religion; God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, and how they relate to one another. The concept of the Trinity, three in one and one in three, only very gradually emerged as the most satisfactory answer. In our secular age it is difficult for us to fully appreciate the theological minutia of these early Church schisms, but in the Middle Ages they could cause war and bring down nations. Orthodox Christianity contested with two prominent heresies; Arianism and Monophysitism. Many of the Germanic groups such as the Visigoths, Ostrogoths and Vandals had been converted to Arian Christianity, and this had the effort of distancing them from their native Roman populations. Meanwhile, Egypt was dominated by Monophysite Christianity, which would proved a long-standing sociopolitical disruption for the Byzantine Empire. The efforts of the Byzantine Church to accommodate her Monophysite minority would play an important part in the ultimate Great Schism of 1054 AD, between the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. Two other great struggles dominated the Medieval Church. Firstly, the clashes between Church and state that began with the Investiture Controversy from 1076, and continued through the Crusades and beyond. And secondly, the moral crises within the Church prompted by the corrupting effects of secular power, which a number of reforming popes tried to confront starting with Pope Leo IX (1049-1054 AD), yet ultimately led to The Reformation. Arianism was one of many schisms of the early Church that had been suppressed within the Roman Empire but not before missionary success among the Germanic peoples. It was in the Church and of course the Eastern Empire that the great legacy of Rome would be preserved, to be rediscovered by later generations during the Renaissance: the calendar and engineering, science and philosophy, law and politics. British Isles The Roman province of Britannia was abandoned in 407 AD, and of cultural continuity there is virtually no trace. Towns were abandoned, and trade dramatically declined. Even the language was to go, replaced almost completely by a Germanic tongue. The Roman heritage of the island of Britain was purely physical. It lay in the ruins of towns and villas, or the great constructions like Hadrian’s Wall, which people came to believe were the works of giants of superhuman power. Some of these relics, like the baths upon the thermal springs at Bath, disappeared from sight for hundreds of years until rediscovered in the 18th-century. After the Roman withdrawal, the power vacuum didn’t go unnoticed. The Romano-British soon came under intense pressure from the Celtic Picts and Scots in the north, and Germanic tribes on the continent with Britain in their sights. They even sent an appeal for help known as the Groans of the Britons ''to the Western Roman Empire in 446 AD, but no help was forthcoming. The main threat came from two Germanic tribal groups, the Angles and the Saxons of Jutland (modern day Denmark); today the term Anglo-Saxon is still used to signify someone who is ethnically English. The advance of these more primitive and ferocious intruders was supposedly briefly halt by a victory at the Battle of Badon (c. 500) under the war leader Ambrosius Aurelianus. In this, we may have a fleeting glimpse of the last spasms of Romano-British resistance in the legend of King Arthur. Nevertheless by the year 600 AD, the fertile plains of what is now England were occupied by Angles, Saxons, and others such as the Jutes. Their chieftains set about establishing themselves as regional kings. Gradually through the usual processes of warfare, marriage and inheritance, the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms would coalesce into seven stable kingdoms by the 8th century. Anglo-Saxon England was fringed by the Celtic world, which had remained unaffected by the intruders; isolated Cornwall and mountainous Wales, as well as Scotland and Ireland which had never been Romanised. The Anglo-Saxons were pagans, and another aspect of the Roman heritage to disappear was Christianity, with the keepers of the faith retreating to the misty fastnesses of the Celtic Church. Christianity was gradually reintroduced to England by missionaries during the 7th-century from another Rome. Pope Gregory I (d. 604) sent missionaries to England in 595 AD led by St. Augustine (d. 604 AD) to revive the faith. Meanwhile missionaries also came from the Celtic Church, especially from Ireland. During Roman times, missionary efforts in Ireland, beginning about 431 AD, had given the Christian religion a firmer footing; notably those of St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. The 6th-century was a golden age for the Celtic Church in Ireland: the great Irish monasteries were established at Clonmacnoise, Glendalough, and Lismore, among others from which the Church exerts its far-flung influence; scholars excelled in the study of Latin and Greek philosophy and Christian theology; and the arts of manuscript illumination, metalworking, and sculpture flourished, producing such treasures as the ''Book of Kells and the many carved stone crosses that dot the "island of saints and scholars". Notably among the great Irish missionaries to England was St. Aidan (d. 651), who with admirable energy and fervour restored Christianity to Mercia and Northumbria, and still had time to establish the great monastery at Lindisfarne. Differences in usage between the Roman and Celtic missions did occasionally cause friction, especially in the calculation of the date of Easter. Maybe this friction goes some way to explaining England's own golden age of Christianity between the mid-7th to the mid-8th centuries; notable for the great historian Bede (d. 735), and Alcuin (d. 804) who had a prominent role in the court of Charlemagne. France, Germany and Spain Across the Channel, things were very different, and much survived. The Germanic peoples who inherited the former provinces of Gaul and Hispania adopted important elements of Gallo-Roman civilisation, and their eventual assimilation resulted in a fusion of Germanic culture with that of the Romans. When Roman administration finally collapsed, Gaul was divided into several Germanic kingdoms: the Visigoths were long-established in the south-west after the granting to them of Aquitaine in 415 AD; the Franks assumed control of the north-east; and the Burgundians had settled in south-east near the Rhine. Meanwhile, a remnant of the empire survived the fall in northern Gaul, as Roman Soissons (457-486). For a time, the Visigoths were the strongest of the kingdoms, whose central role in driving-back Attila the Hun in 450 AD gave them greater importance than ever. They energetically extended their territory south into Hispania, until they controlled by the end of the reign of Euric (466-484) almost all the vast region, except for the Suevi in the north-west. In spite of the influx of Germans, Roman influence remained strong in Gaul and Hispania, and the Germans themselves were to varying degrees Romanised. This influence was strongest among the Burgundians (411–534) and the Visigoths (418-720). The rule of some 200,000 long-haired Visigoths over several million Hispano-Romans was precarious; the rugged terrain of the Iberian peninsula, where local loyalties were strong, always worked against centralised rule. Religion was another barrier to integration, for although the Visigoths had converted to Christianity, it was to the Arian branch, rather than the Orthodox Christianity of the Romanised population. Of all the Barbarian Kingdoms, it was the Burgundians who most aspired to be seen as Roman. They gradually converted from Arian to Orthodox Christians from about 500, and were the first to try and reconcile Roman and Germanic legal traditions into a common Burgundian Code (516). Nevertheless, the Germanic group that would have a bigger impact on the shaping of Western Europe than any other were the Franks. Prior to the great wave of barbarian incursions of 401 AD, the Franks were already settled on the border of the Roman Empire in modern day Belgium and Holland. Unlike the Visigoths and Burgundians, they were still polytheistic Germanic pagans. As Roman power declined, they had expanded their power into northern Gaul as far west as Tournai. During the 5th-century, the Franks remained a loose alliance, and there were many Frankish petty-kingdoms on both sides of the River Rhine, around Cologne, Tournai, Cambrai and elsewhere. The first king to unite all of the Frankish petty-kingdoms under one ruler was Childeric's son Clovis I (481-511 AD). In 486 AD, he conquered the last Roman rump-state in north-western Gaul at the Battle of Soissons. This great victory allowed him to asserted his authority over all the Franks, through an unscrupulous blend of warfare and intrigue. The next important step for the pagan Franks was the marriage of Clovis to a Burgundian princess in 496. She was a Orthodox Christian, though her people were still predominantly Arians, and Clovis embraced the faith himself; at Reims the bishop baptised him and some 3000 of his soldiers. Clovis had good political reasons for this conversion, simultaneously the way to friendship with the Gallo-Roman population, and allying the Franks with the Christian Church itself, the most important institutional remnant of the Roman Empire. Meanwhile his marriage, did not prevent Clovis from sucessfully demanding tribute from the Burgundians in the south-east. The Visigoths in the south-west were tackled next. After defeat at the Battle of Vouillé (507), the Visigothic territory in Gaul was reduced to a narrow strip along the Mediterranean, and the capital shifted from Toulouse, south to Toledo. On Clovis' death, the Frankish realm under the Merovingian Dynasty (457-752) and with its capital in Paris, encompassed almost the whole of France, as well as Belgium, Holland, and parts of western Germany; the heir to Roman supremacy in north Europe. Indeed, the name France comes from the Latin version of their name, Francia or “''the land of the Franks''”. However, this was not the start of the continuous history of France. According to the Frankish custom, on his death Clovis’ kingdom was divided between his four sons and later among his grandsons. In the long term this form of equal inheritance would weaken the Merovingian realm, but for the moment expansion continued. The rich territory of Burgundy, formerly a tribute payer, was conquered in 534. After the fall of Ostrogothic Italy in 540, the Franks also took control of southern Germany from them. They were less successful in northern Germany, where Saxony was turned into a tribute payer, only to successfully revolt a few years later. Gradually, the Frankish realm settled down in four relatively stable bits: Austrasia in the north-east with its capital at Metz; Neustria in the north-west with its capital at Soissons; Aquitaine in the south-west; and Burgundy retained its own identity in the south-east. Despite this new division, their rulers tended to quarrel over the lands where these regions touched. The frequent wars weakened the authority of the Frankish kings, while their aristocrats gained great concessions and power in return for their support. It was from the most powerful of these aristocrats that the Carolingian Dynasty emerged in the 8th century, which would reach its peak in Charlemagne, the towering figure of European Early Medieval history. Byzantine Empire (476-518 AD) To some modern historians Constantinople was by this time the capital of the young Byzantine Empire, but to people living in the 5th century it was still the centre of the very ancient Roman Empire. There are few terms in the study of history more misleading that Byzantine. While sometimes justified by the fact that the Eastern Roman Empire no longer included the city of Rome, the line of Roman emperors continued in unbroken succession from Augustus to Constantine XI. The terms came into use in the 16th-century, to obscure the bitter rivalry that developed between Western Europe and the Eastern Roman Empire, as well as between the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. Europeans cherished their inheritance from the Ancient Greeks and Romans, so Byzantine was used to describe an empire that somehow had become contemptible. Nevertheless, until the late Middle Ages, the Byzantine Empire provided a beacon for barbarous Europe to aspire to, in terms of a strong and cohesive political system, and a complex fiscal, bureaucratic, and cultural structure. When the Germanic general Odoacer deposed the last Western Roman emperor, Zeno (474-491 AD) was emperor in the East. He was the second of a series of strong Eastern emperors that would see the Byzantine Empire survive the fall of the West. Zeno continued the policy of his predecessor Leo I (457-474 AD) of favouring Isaurian generals in the legions, to challenge the dominance of men of Germanic descent. Isauria was a mountainous region in southern Anatolia, with a reputation for rough, barbarous folk; yet they were also undoubtedly culturally Roman. Zeno's reign was plagued by domestic revolts, but in staving off these attempted coups and rebellions, his great legacy would be to bring the legions firmly under imperial control. He also sanctioned the conquest of Italy (488-493) by the Ostrogoths under Theodoric; both riding Byzantine territory of the menace of the Germans, and securing nominal control of the peninsula from Odoacer. The Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy (493-540) controlled the most prosperous province of the former Western Empire, both economically and culturally, and Theodoric brought a period of calm and stable rule to the peninsula. He seems to have been a judicious ruler; memories of his reign earned Theodoric a lasting place in Germanic legend, in the epic poem Nibelungenlied. He never deviates from his arrangement with Constantinople, ruling in Italy as the emperor's appointed military governor; on his coins appeared the inscription "Unvanquished Rome". Romans were appointed to civil offices almost exclusively, while the Ostrogoths were merely the mercenary soldiers of the empire. The arrangement even suited the papacy in Rome, because Theodoric made no attempt to interfere in Church affairs. Nevertheless the rule of a barbarian in Italy was unacceptable in the longer term, something Theodoric himself was not blind to. He made efforts to maintaining good relations with the other Germanic kingdoms of Western Europe; he married Clovis’ sister. Zeno was succeeded by Anastasius (491-518 AD) whose greatest contribution to the empire was the huge treasury he left for Justinian the Great to exploit. An able administrator, he introduced new stable copper coinage; Constantine’s gold coin had only really benefited the very wealthy. The copper coins allowed the empire to return to a taxation system based entirely on hard currency rather than produce, which helped Anastasius tackle corruption. Payment to the legions also returned to cash, which helped attract native Byzantines back to military service. His reign was also largely peaceful, other than a brief war with Sassanid Persia (502–505 AD), and this helped trade to flourish. Byzantines under Justinian (518-565 AD) After a 27 years reign, Anastasius died without nominating an heir. It was the Praetorian Guard who elevated the new emperor, Justin I (518-527 AD), the well-respected commander of the palace guard. A career soldier with little knowledge of statecraft, Justin wisely surrounded himself with trusted advisor, most notably his nephew and adopted son Justinian. When Justinian the Great (527-565 AD) succeeded to purple, he brought a tireless work ethic to the imperial court. He immediately set to work on one of his most lasting achievements, the Code of Justinian; a complete revision of Roman law. Century after century of rulings were reviewed to remove the obsolete and contradictory, and clarify a comprehensive legal code; it would be the foundation documents for almost all Western legal tradition, and an inspiration as late as the Napoleonic Code of 1804. Despite the huge treasury left to him by Anastasius, Justinian had big plans to be paid for through a tax hike on the very wealthy. This prompted the most dangerous revolt of his reign, the Nika Riots (532 AD) encouraged by disgruntled aristocrats. Nearly 30,000 rioters were killed in Justinian's crackdown, and half the city of Constantinople was damaged. Nevertheless, this provided Justinian with an opportunity to cement his legacy in stone with a series of splendid buildings, including one of the world's most spectacular buildings. The Basilica of the Hagia Sophia achieved with triumphant skill the feat of placing a vast circular dome on top of a square formed of four arches. It remained the world's largest cathedral for nearly a thousand years, until Seville Cathedral was completed in 1520. Yet the most spectacular features of Justinian's reign were his military campaigns. They start in the east with the Byzantine-Persian War (530-532 AD). The hostilities erupted, for the first time in over twenty years, when the Christian region of Iberia to the north of Armenia defected to the Byzantines and was forcibly returned to the control of Sassanid Persia. Both side enjoyed victories; the Byzantines at the Battle of Dara (530 AD), and the Persians at Battle of Callinicum (531 AD). When the king of the Persians died and a more sympathetic king succeeded him, Justinian opened peace negotiations and concluded an "Eternal Peace" with Persia; it would last just eight years. With his eastern frontier secure, Justinian next turned to the reconquest of the Western Empire, starting with the most troublesome of the Barbarian Kingdoms, the piratical Vandals of north Africa; the Vandalic War (533-534 AD). In 533 AD, Belisarius, the greatest general of his day, and an army of some 16,000 troops landed in north Africa. Success came with surprising ease, with the Vandals completely caught off-guard and much of their army away dealing with a revolt in Sardinia. The Byzantines defeated the Vandals outside Carthage and entered the city in triumph; the Vandals had no answer to the Byzantine cavalry, largely made up of former Huns. The Vandals did manage to regroup, but were again defeated, this time decisively. Although north Africa had been recovered, it would remain troubled for the next 15 years; the Vandals had been in decline amidst incessant warfare with the desert Moors. The easy with which north Africa had been brought back into the empire, encouraged Justinian to press on to the ultimate goal of bringing Italy back under direct imperial rule; the long and protracted Gothic War (535–554). The imperial resources were now overstretched, and Belisarius invaded Italy with barely 8,000 men. As he moved north, city after city was subdued, until he finally captured Rome in 536. However, with each city his meagre resources were further depleted. The Ostrogoths hadn’t alienated the populous in Italy, as the Vandals had in Africa, and the Byzantine progress had been facilitated by a succession crisis among the Goths. The Ostrogoths were soon reunited, and Belisarius found himself besieged in Rome, until he could be reinforced some twelve months later. However, back in Constantinople, Belisarius' success and growing popularity had stoked the paranoia of Justinian, who sent a trusted eunuch called Narses to keep an eye on him. Tension between Narses and Belisarius only hampered the campaign, until Narses was finally recalled to Constantinople in 539 AD. Nonetheless, just as Belisarius captured the Ostrogothic capital of Ravenna in 540 AD, he was urgently recalled to the east. The denuded defences on the border had proven too tempting for the Persians, who invaded Syria and even sacked Antioch, the third largest city in the empire; the Byzantine-Persian War (540-545 AD). Although Belisarius succeeded in driving the Persians out and shoring up the defences, more trouble was brewing for the Byzantines. From 541, starting in Egypt, an outbreak of bubonic plague swept through the empire, killing almost 20% of the population of the Byzantine Empire; it would return periodically for the next 200 years although never as devastatingly as this first outbreak. Most devastating of all, the emperor himself was struck down. Although he survived, while Justinian was incapacitated his wife’s paranoia took over again, and Belisarius was recalled yet again in disgrace. Meanwhile in Italy, the resurgent Ostrogoths were back on the offensive, until only Ravenna, Ancona and Otranto remained in Byzantine hands. Belisarius was again sent back to Italy, but with little authority and few resources he could only preserve the three Byzantine holdings; it is hard not to wonder, had it not been for such petty jealousies, what might have been achieved by Justinian and Belisarius. The arrival of the eunuch general Narses in 551 with an army of 35,000 men marked another shift in Gothic fortunes. Within three years the peninsula was largely under Byzantine control, though pockets of resistance held out for another few years. The end of the conflict saw Italy devastated and considerably depopulated; Rome itself had been sacked three times. As a consequence, the victorious Byzantines found themselves unable to resist the invasion of another Germanic tribe, the Lombards, in 568, who took control most of the Italian peninsula. Meanwhile in 551, Justinian had also secured with minimal resources some holdings on the coast of Hispania based around Cordoba, when the local population revolted against Visigoth rule. In retrospect Justinian seems something of a failure. Yet he behaved as people thought an emperor should; he did what most people still expected that a strong emperor would one day do; reuniting and restoring the old empire, centred on Constantinople though it now had to be. Afterall, no one could really conceive a world without the empire. The barbarian kings of the West gladly deferred to Constantinople and accepted titles from it. For the last 10 years of his life, Justinian allowed the reins of state to slip somewhat, while he concentrated on the futile task of uniting the Orthodox Church with the Monophysite heresy which dominated Egypt. He died at the age of 83 of a heart attack. His achievements in the fields of art, architecture, legal reform, and conquest are remarkable by the standards of any leader in history. Yet the protracted wars laid a heavy burden on the Byzantine Empire's dwindling manpower and tax-base in the wake of the plague. This would leave the empire vulnerable, first to the Persians and then most catastrophically to the Rise of Islam. Category:Historical Periods